My Blackberry has become an indispensable tool I use on a daily basis. It lets me know if one of my servers is having uptime issues or, even worse, has crashed, enter new contacts when I’m out and about, find where I need to go through Google Maps, and even send and receive the “occasional” email.

However, I’ve stumble upon a couple of feature requests I’d love to see in the next revision of the Blackberry Enterprise Server (BES) software.

1. The ability to support two or more paired Blackberries on a single Exchange account

Yes, believe it or not, I ran into this problem last month. A client of mine has a general email account that three in office employees are using simultaneously through Outlook. The account was paired with a Blackberry 8700 in case one of the office employees has to leave the office to run errands.

After an employee left the company, my client realised they had an extra Blackberry 8700 laying around the office. After resetting the Blackberry, I told my client that it might be a good idea to pair the Blackberry with the general email account so that two employees could continue to monitor messages coming into the account while outside of the office.

I thought that it would be an easy process to pair this Blackberry to the general email account, seeing as adding Blackberries to Exchange accounts has become second nature to me. Unfortunately, as I found out, it’s impossible to pair multiple Blackberries to a single Exchange account due to BES software and security limitations.

Now, I can see why BES would only allow one Blackberry to be used with an Exchange account. Sure, there’s a big security issue with having multiple portable devices paired with an Exchange account. But at the same time, such a set up is no more insecure than an office where 3 or 4 work stations are using a common Exchange account. So, frazzled after a couple of hours of mucking around and a call or two to some technicians I gave up. As I was told on the phone, “What you’re looking to do is impossible.”

2. Allow Blackberry devices to open and use shared contacts from Exchange accounts

Again, we’re going back to the office of the same client. Their general Exchange account, “generalmail@company.com,” is also the shared contacts account that the rest of the company uses. Opening the shared contacts from the account “generalmail@company.com” works great for all users accessing their Exchange accounts through Outlook. Users can access the latest contacts and email, phone or fax with ease and also add to the contact list as needed. Unfortunately, on the Blackberry, easily accessing these shared contacts becomes an impossible task.

One obvious solution to accessing the shared contacts on a Blackberry device would be to start using the Global Address Book. A recent software update to BES allows users to access their Global Address Book from their Blackberry. The biggest issue with the Global Address Book is that it’s limited to 500 entered contacts. But since the company has about 1000 shared contacts in the general Exchange account, using the Global Address Book to access and manage contacts through their Blackberries isn’t an option.

In the mean time, the company’s president has to copy the contacts from the general account’s shared contacts to his personal contact list when he wants to add any new contacts to his Blackberry. It’s not an arduous task, but it’s 10 minutes of copying and pasting time that’s spent every week making sure that the latest contacts are available on his Blackberry. And over the course of the year, 10 minutes a week adds up to a lot of time.

So, Research In Motion, perhaps you’re already working on these enhancements. I don’t think these issues are ones that will prevent an organisation from deploying a fleet of Blackberries for their employees, but I think they are features that can definitely be taken advantage of by companies who have customised email environments. Off the top of my head, I can think of 2 organisations I deal with in addition to my own office that could benefit from the ability to pair multiple Blackberries with a common Exchange account and open shared contact lists on the Blackberry.

Perhaps other Internerds have some other suggestions that can stoke the code fires of the RIM Blackberry Enterprise Server development team?